Dear Friends,
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. Of all the liturgical celebrations we have throughout the year, this one may generate the gentlest humor. Things like, “well of course Mary could be a good mother, her child was God and didn’t sin,” or “if you are too good of a family, your children will never leave, look at Jesus, he didn’t leave home until he was thirty.”
I usually try to remind folks that this is the feast of the “holy” family, not the “perfect” family. I am sure there were misunderstandings and human struggles in Jesus’ family just like there are in yours. For our annual fund raiser at my last parish, we would honor families for the model discipleship they provided to others. However, it was always very difficult to get families to say “yes” to being honored. Often times, they would tell me that I did not know what life was like at their home and if I did, I would not be asking them. I would remind them that we were looking for folks that strove to be good disciples of Jesus, not perfect disciples.
How do we become a holy family? There are a lot of little treasures in the scriptures to give us ideas on how to be that “holy family”. A family I know has a bit of latin on a plaque in their home: Omnia enim vestra sunt, vos autem Christi, Christus autem Dei. It is taken from Paul’s letter to the people in Corinth where he is responding to their fighting with one another over who does what in the church. He says no one should boast for “everything belongs to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.”
Imagine a room full of children, some of them old enough to read, some running around, some are yelling, and some are just crawling. In the room there is a coloring book, three crayons, a ball, and a jump rope. When the children start fighting over the items, what is a parent to do? The children haven’t learned to compromise or to share or to wait yet, so that is what they need to learn. And the reason they need to learn is because there is not enough stuff there for all of them.
I was the oldest of six. I understand scarcity. I still tend to eat as though there may not be any for seconds because someone took it all, as if that would hurt me. My mother tried to teach us to share and to wait because there isn’t always enough to go around.
But that isn’t what St. Paul teaches the Corinthians at all. He doesn’t say to them, you should share because there isn’t much. He says, you should stop fighting over things because everything is already yours. Why fight? Instead, be like Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.
Jesus wasn’t concerned that his equality with God was special. He did not cling to it but set aside his needs, became like a servant, so we could be saved. God exalts Jesus, which affects the next phrase from St. Paul. You belong to Christ. And it gets even better!
And Christ is God’s. We already have the best thing according to St. Paul. Why would we fight over lesser things? Everything is already ours. Even life and death. Even all the saints. Even the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life!
According to St. Paul, if we come to appreciate what we have already been given, then all the fighting among us should diminish and we should be able to be Christ for others. If we can begin to do that, then we become holy. Then our family becomes holy. Christ is ours and we are his. Holy.
Peace,
Fr. Damian